The majority of current day stethoscopes are used for a number of years, with individual clinicians using the same stethoscope day after day on multiple patients. Clinicians may choose to use the same stethoscope for many years for familiarity, but also for cost concerns. Current designs of stethoscopes having high acoustic quality can come at a high cost, with the two most expensive components of stethoscopes being the chest piece and the head set. Most, if not all, stethoscopes currently sold include a chest piece with the tubing extending from a side surface of the bell of the chest piece such that the tubing is positioned parallel to the diaphragm. An example of a typical current day stethoscope chest pieces is illustrated in FIG. 1.
Another factor which figures into the cost of current day stethoscopes include attachment of the diaphragm to the chest piece. The diaphragms currently used on most stethoscopes are made of two pieces, the diaphragm and the rim. The rim is used to hold the diaphragm on the chest piece. While this construction works very well to hold the components on the chest piece, the process for manufacturing the two piece rim/diaphragm construction requires numerous operations to produce the assembled rim/diaphragm constructions. Generally, separate operations are needed to manually mold the diaphragms, to manually mold the rims, to manually trim runners from diaphragms, to manually assemble the diaphragms into the rims positioned on the chest piece, and to inspect all assembled products.
While so-called disposable or single-use stethoscopes, such as, for example the Welch Allyn Uniscope disposable stethoscope, are available at a low cost, the sound quality of these stethoscopes is often not accepted by clinicians due to the materials and construction.